We’ve all seen those maps in which various large countries are projected onto Africa to make us understand just how huge Africa is and how dirty it’s been done by the Mercator projection.
Ones like this:
Thank heavens that Cape Town avoids being dragged into China. I don’t speak a word of Chinese. Although, they did bring us some key ingredients in this delicious offering.
Anyway, this is a really good way of illustrating the actual size of something, relative to other things. Some people might find that map of Africa rather surprising. Having sat on planes going up and down the length of it for many, many hours, I was less surprised.
But Luxembourg? Tiny, little Luxembourg? It’s not actually that small:
Or is it? Because the Africa map has been filled in with numerous VERY BIG countries. And I couldn’t help but notice that the numerous countries filling in the Luxembourg map, are actually very small. Quite literally the smallest countries on the whole planet.
The map is meant to show us that Luxembourg isn’t a microstate, and it does that very well by showing us just how easily seven (don’t miss the Vatican between Malta and Gozo!) actual microstates fit into its borders.
Luxembourg is 2,586.4 km2 (998.6 sq mi) with a population of 576,249, making it one of the world’s smallest states; 168th by size or 164th by population.
However, the combined populations of these 7 microstates is 6,248,221: nearly 11 times more people than Luxembourg. So Luxembourg is not only not a microstate, but it’s practically empty!
“Empty” compared to some of the most densely populated countries on earth, perhaps. The 7 microstates above come in at 2, 3, 7, 9, 24, 60 and 75 out of the 242 territories on this list. But Luxembourg actually comes in at 55/242 – less “empty” than Andorra or Liechtenstein, and less “empty” than 77% of the other places on the planet.
But it’s not a microstate.
And Africa is very big.
